House of Echoes

‘Thank you but no.’ Janet drained her glass and stood up. ‘I only came to bring you the dolly. The last thing you all want is a visitor on your first evening. Later, though, I’d love to come. And in the mean time if you need anything at all we are very close. Please, please don’t hesitate to ask.’ She smiled round at them, then pulling her scarf back over her head, she was gone.

‘Nice woman, Janet Goodyear,’ Luke said to Joss when they were alone in the great hall later. They had made no attempt to introduce any of their furniture there. The room was too big, too stately, and, they both agreed needed no more than was there already.

The meal had been eaten and the beds made up and Luke’s first job, a rusty, shabby 1929 Bentley, had been ushered into the yard on the back of a low loader. It hadn’t even required an advertisement in the paper. A card in the shop, and a few words in the pub and the phone had rung three days later. Colonel Maxim, from the next village had owned the car for twelve years and had never got round to working on it himself. Luke could start on it as soon as possible, and when that was done, there was a 1930 Alvis belonging to a friend.

Tom, exhausted by the excitement of the day had gone to bed in his own room without a murmur. The old nurseries led off the main bedroom which was to be Joss and Luke’s, and, with the doors open into the short passage which separated the two rooms they would easily be able to hear him if he cried. The nursery complex consisted of three rooms, one of which had been converted into a bathroom. It was a cold, north facing room, and even the string bag full of Tom’s colourful bath toys did nothing to cheer it up. ‘Curtains, bright rug, wall heater and lots of vivid, warm towels,’ Joss dictated as she took the little boy on her knee after his bath and cuddled him dry. Lyn was making a shopping list, sitting on the closed lid of the loo. ‘Tom’s bathroom and bedroom are a priority.’ She shivered in spite of the heat from the gas cylinder heater Luke had put into the room. ‘I want him to love this place.’

‘At least your four poster will keep the draught out,’ Lyn commented. The bedroom she had been allocated off the main staircase, although facing south across the garden, was bitterly cold. In the past it was obvious a fire had been lit in the grate in there. There was a rudimentary central heating system, working off the range, but the heat didn’t seem to reach the bedrooms, and they had already decided that they would just have to stay cold. A thousand blankets, hot-water bottles and thermal pyjamas were going to be the order of the day from now on.

‘How long do you think Joe and Alice will stay?’ Joss pulled the fleece-lined pyjama top over Tom’s curls.

‘As long as you like.’ Lyn was adding soap, loo paper and cleaning materials to her list. ‘Mum doesn’t want to get in the way, but she’d really love to stay right up to Christmas. She’d help you get the place straight.’

‘I know she would, bless her. And I’d like her to. In fact I’d love you all to stay, if you’d like to.’

* * *

‘So, what do you think of it all?’ Luke put his arm round Joss’s shoulders. They had lit a small fire and were standing looking down at it as the dry logs cracked and spat. Lyn and Alice and Joe had all gone to bed, exhausted by their day.

‘I suppose it’s like a dream come true.’ Joss leaned her elbow against the heavy oak bressummer beam that spanned the huge fireplace, looking down into the flames. ‘I think we should have the tree in here. A huge one, covered in fairy lights.’

‘Sounds good.’

‘Tom will be thrilled. He was too young to know what was going on last year.’ Joss smiled to herself. ‘Did you hear him talking to Dad: “Tom put paper there”. He was getting really cross, taking it out of the bag as fast as Dad put it in.’

‘Luckily your father loved it.’ Luke frowned. ‘It must be very strange for them, knowing this house belonged to your real parents.’

‘Strange for them!’ Joss shook her head hard, as if trying to clear her brain. ‘Think what it’s like for me. I don’t even like to call Dad, Dad. It’s as if I feel my other father might be listening.’

Luke nodded. ‘I rang my parents while you were upstairs. Just to say we’re here.’

Joss smiled fondly. ‘How are they? How is life in Chicago?’ She knew how much Luke was missing them, especially his father. Geoffrey Grant’s sabbatical year in the States seemed to have dragged on for a long, long time.

‘They’re great. And they’re coming home early next summer.’ He paused. He and Joss had been planning a trip out to see them. That was not going to happen now, of course. ‘They can’t wait to see the house, Joss. It’s hard to know how to explain all this over the phone.’ He gave a snort of laughter.

Joss smiled. ‘I suppose it is!’ She lapsed into thoughtful silence.

‘Have you had another look for the key to the desk in the study yet?’ Luke nudged the logs with the toe of his trainer and watched with satisfaction as a curtain of sparks spread out over the sooty bricks at the back of the hearth.

‘I haven’t been in the study since we arrived this morning.’ She stood up straight. ‘I’m going to have a tot of Janet Goodyear’s present and then I think I might go and have a poke around while you have your bath.’

* * *

The room was cold, the windows black reflections of the night. With a shiver Joss set her glass down on one of the little tables and went to close the shutters and pull the heavy brocade curtains. The table lamp threw a subdued light across the rugs on the floor, illuminating the abandoned work basket beside it. Joss stood looking down at it for a long time. There was a lump in her throat at the thought that her mother had used those small, filigree scissors and that the silver thimble must have fitted her finger. Hesitantly Joss reached for it and slipped it on her own finger. It fitted.

There was a key in the bottom of the work basket, lost under the silks and cotton threads – a small ornate key which Joss knew instinctively would fit the keyhole in the desk.

Reaching up she switched on the lamp which rested on the top of the desk, and stared at the array of small pigeon holes which the opened lid revealed. It was tidy but not empty and it was immediately obvious that the desk had been her mother’s. Taking a sip from her glass Joss reached for a bundle of letters. With a strange feeling half of guilt, half excitement she pulled off the ribbon which bound them together.

They were all addressed to her mother and they came from someone called Nancy. She glanced through them, wondering who Nancy was. A close friend and a gossip by the look of it, who had lived in Eastbourne. They told her nothing at all about her mother, but quite a lot about the unknown Nancy. With a tolerant smile she retied the ribbon and tucked them back in their place.

There were pens and a bottle of ink, paper clips, tags, envelopes, all the paraphernalia of a busy person; a drawer of unused headed note paper, and there, in another drawer by itself, a leather-bound notebook. Curiously Joss pulled it out and opened it. On the flyleaf, in her mother’s hand was written ‘For my daughter, Lydia’. Joss shivered. Had her mother been so sure then that she would come to Belheddon; that one day she would sit down on this chair at this desk and pull open the drawers one by one until she found – she flicked it open – not a diary, as she had half expected, just empty pages, undated.

And one short scrawled paragraph, towards the middle of the book:

He came again today, without warning and without mercy. My fear makes him stronger –

‘Joss?’ Luke’s voice in the doorway made her jump out of her skin. He was dressed in his bathrobe and from where she sat she could smell the musky drift of his aftershave.

She slammed the book shut and took a deep breath.

‘What is it? Is something wrong?’

‘No. Nothing.’ Slotting the notebook back into its drawer she pulled down the flap on the desk, turning the key. ‘The desk was my mother’s. It seems so strange to read her letters and things –’

My fear makes him stronger

Who, for God’s sake? Who was her mother so frightened of and why had she written about him in an otherwise empty notebook which she had left especially for Joss to read?

As she lay in the four-poster bed, staring up at the silk decoration in the darkness over her head Joss found it hard to close her eyes. Beside her Luke had fallen into a restless sleep almost as soon as his head had touched the pillow. They were both worn out. After all, the day had started at five in London and now, at midnight, they were at Belheddon, and for better or for worse this was now their home.

Moving her head slightly to left or right Joss could see the squares of starlight which showed the two windows on opposite sides of the room. Divided by stone mullions in the old plaster one looked over the front of the house and down the drive towards the village, the other across the back garden and down towards the lake and beyond it, over the hedge to the river estuary and beyond it the distant North Sea. Initially Luke had closed the curtains when he came upstairs. They were heavy with woollen embroidery, double lined against the cold, luxurious. Looking at them Joss was grateful for their weight against the draughts, but even so, she pulled them open before she climbed into the high bed. ‘Too claustrophobic,’ she explained to Luke as he lay back beside her. His only answer, minutes later, was a gentle snore. Outside the moon shone onto a garden as bright as day as the frosty sparkle hardened into a skim of ice. Shivering, Joss huddled down under the duvet – a modern concession, the embroidered bed cover carefully folded away for safety – glad of the solid warmth of her sleeping husband. Surreptitiously her hand strayed to his shoulder. As she snuggled up against him in the darkness she did not see the slight movement in the corner of the room.

7 (#ulink_ae5f1fb0-45ab-51f2-9651-3687e738d6e5)

It was still dark when Joss slipped from the bed, tiptoeing across the icy floor in bare feet. Behind her Luke gave a quiet murmur and, punching the pillow turned over and went back to sleep. Switching on the light in the bathroom Joss reached for her clothes, left piled on the chair. Thick trousers, shirt, two sweaters, heavy thermal socks. In the ice cold room her breath came in small clouds. On the window pane, as she held back the curtain and peered out into the darkness she was enchanted and horrified to find the beautiful, lacy designs of Jack Frost on the inside of the glass. With a rueful smile she padded across the floor and glanced through Tom’s door. Worn out by the excitement of the day before he was sleeping flat on his back, his arms above his head on the pillow, his cheeks pink with sleep. Tiptoeing to the chest where his night light burned she glanced at the thermometer which Alice had suggested they keep in the room. The temperature was steady. With a fond smile, she tiptoed out of the room and left the door slightly ajar. If he woke, Luke would hear him.

Putting the kettle onto the stove Joss went to the back door and pulled it open. The morning blackness was totally silent. No bird song. No traffic murmur in the distance as there would have been in London; no cheerful clank of milk bottles. Pulling on her heavy coat she stepped out into the courtyard. The bulk of the old Bentley had been pulled into the coach house and the doors closed. There was nothing here now, but their own Citroën, covered in a thick white frost. The gate out into the garden was painfully cold even beneath her gloved hands as she pushed it back and let herself out onto the matted lawn. Above her head the stars were still blazing as though it were full night. Glancing up she could see a faint light shining from behind the curtains in Lyn’s room. Was she too unable to sleep in a strange bed?

The grass was spiky, brittle beneath her boots. Almost she could hear the tinkle of broken glass as she walked across it, skirting the skeletal branches of a blackly silhouetted tree, down towards the gleam of water. In the east now, she realised, the stars were dimming. Soon it would begin to grow light.

She stood for several moments, gloved hands in pockets, staring down at the ice as around her the garden began imperceptibly to brighten. She was numb with cold, but through the chill she could feel something else. Apprehension – fear even – for what they had done. They had had no real choice. Even if Luke had found a job working for someone else she doubted if they could have afforded the rent on a flat of a decent size and certainly they couldn’t have bought somewhere of their own. They could no longer live in London. But this, this was so different. Another world from the one they had planned together when they had first got married. She frowned, stamping her feet, reluctant as yet to go back inside. A new world, new people, new memories – no, memories wasn’t the right word. A history to be learned and assimilated and in some way lived.

Sammy!

The voice, a boy’s voice, called suddenly out of the darkness behind her. Joss spun round.

Sammy!

It came again, more distant now.

Across the lawn, in the house, a light had appeared in her and Luke’s bedroom. The curtains weren’t quite closed and a broad vee of light flooded out across the frosted grass.

‘Hello?’ Joss’s voice was a husky intrusion into the intense silence. ‘Who’s there?’ She glanced round. The stars were disappearing fast now. A dull greyness was drifting in amongst the bushes in the shrubbery near her. She frowned. ‘Is there someone there?’ She called again, more loudly this time, her voice seeming to echo across the water. In the distance a bird called loudly. Then the silence returned.

Turning sharply back to the house she found she was shivering violently as she hurried back in the direction of the kitchen. Pulling off her boots and gloves she ran inside, blowing on her fingers, to find the kettle cheerfully filling the room with steam. When Luke appeared, some ten minutes later, she was sitting at the table, still in her heavy coat, her hands cupped around a mug of tea.

‘So, Joss, how is it?’ He smiled at her as he found himself a mug on the draining board.